I’m no expert but I think what you’re actually describing is cricket.
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Honestly, if you don’t see a difference between Bloomfield and Dodds, who are basically the opposite ends of the management/coaching spectrum, why even have a manager at all?
Absolutely flabbergasted that anyone would think the season would have gone “the same way” under Bloomfield. Even if we had missed out, it would have been in much more stirring fashion, as we would have had a go, he would have rotated, brought subs on before 87 minutes, etc. You can never say for sure what would happen - especially as Wrexham were lucky and favoured - but it is absolutely incredible that anyone would think we would have scored 6 in 10/12 games (whatever it was we finished with) under Bloomfield, and limped to the finish line like a wounded slug.
All this retrospective “the slip in form started under Blooms” is nonsense. We hammered Shrewsbury 4-1 and Stevenage 3-0, both away, during that run. In other words, the free-scoring team was still there, just having a comedown from the unsustainable “winning every game” form. And we had A FULL CALENDAR YEAR of excellent form, not just those 8 wins (or 19 unbeaten).
It’s fine to fully support Dodds. But to even imply that his dull as ditchwater mudslide to the end of the season would have been in any way interchangeable with what we would have seen under Blooms is just an attempt to cope.
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Do the stats explain why we were outperforming xG?
I’d imagine at least some of it is because Bloomfield and his team had identified an extremely talented young striker while at Colchester, had continued that interest once back at Wycombe, had brought him in to the club, motivated and nurtured him, and enabled him to perform at a high level. He was able to score goals from chances where you might not expect him to. But that doesn’t mean we were simply lucky, or that goals scored would inevitably return back down to xG.
As @AFCWycombe says we had a whole 12 months of good performances under Bloomfield, a long enough period to even out luck.
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Whilst xG can be a useful source of data (probably) and I’m sure does help coaches analyse performances and look to improve, it isn’t necessarily an overall predictor of whether you will win. It’s really just an enhanced version of shots/goal attempts - if you have 20 shots a game against your opponents 2 shots a game more often than not you will win type thinking.
(Which has brought back a memory from that ‘purple patch’. I seem to remember that for several matches in a row during that period we restricted our opponents to only 0 or 1 shot on target against us).
But I’m sure that the xG gurus are right and the Barnsley fans are still out celebrating, whilst the Wrexham fans are reasonably satisfied with their mid-table position on their return to League 1.
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Stats, xg, regression to the mean, entropy, the heat death of the universe. In the grand scheme of things all football runs, good and bad, will be forgotten.
However whilst we are still here I refuse to accept that the data is so good that before Bloomfield left we all should have known we would finish 5th. If that’s the case, just sign the players in the summer, run the simulation and publish the final table.
Come to think of it you can do that, I believe it’s a game called Championship Manager or somesuch. As I understand it, in that game you can sit at a computer screen and take any team to the top. I’ve never played it but I bet it’s full of data analysis and stats. Who knows, maybe it could be fun to try it with a real club? Welcome to Wycombe.
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Exactly! Bloomfield had a striker freely scoring in his system. This went on for nearly a year - it’s not luck.
Dodds has totally isolated the same player for his entire tenure so far, in favour of a negative, defence first approach.
People can witter on all day about specific metrics to try and explain why we win less games now vs then.
But for anyone with a working pair of eyes, who watches the game rather than a dashboard, we’re putting away far fewer goals, because we create far fewer meaningful chances, because we play terrible negative football that isn’t designed to bring goals.
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The hypocrisy on display here is quite hilarious. XG is for dullards, but “I see the game through my own eyes, mate” is equally dull.
There is a sensible medium of coexistence - and that’s coming from a self-proclaimed hyperbolic twat.
If you try to use xG as an argument that there was little difference between the quality of performance (not results, or style of performance) between pre- and post- January then either you are misusing the data or the data isn’t fit for purpose.
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The simple fact of our failure is that we went from a positive set up to try and score goals to a an ultra defensive and boring method to not concede goals.
GOALS win matches Mr Dodds.
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I agree with you. Data is incredibly useful and can help overcome biases and other misconceptions made through mere observation.
But if the data says Dodds is as creative as Bloomfield, you have a data issue.
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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. xG only takes into account the ‘quality’ of the chance. Not the quality of the striker it falls to, which foot the chance lands on (preferred or swinger), whether it’s a header that falls to Brandon Hanlan or Sam Vokes, the quality of the goalkeeper, the form of the players at the time, the weather conditions (dry, slippy, sun in the players eyes) and a million more variables.
So, inherently it doesn’t mean much. A great example would be penalties, which have a fixed xG of 0.76. But that is regardless of whether you have Matt Le Tissier in his prime taking the penalty against Frank Talia in the 10th minute of a low pressure cup tie, or Terry Evans stepping up against Peter Schmeichel in the Champions League final, 119th minute. It doesn’t take into account enough information to be useful, let’s please stop talking about it.
Bottom line is we were a cracking team under Matt Bloomfield (with Aaron Morley) and had a real chance of the automatics. With Mike Dodds (and without Morley), we were dull to watch and probably upper mid table at best. That’s not to say Dodds doesn’t deserve a chance to mould his own team in pre-season. He does. But it’s just a shame we are in a position of having to do again, given that we already had it.
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If everyone is going down data route, why do we think our data is better than everybody else’s?
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We missed a huge number of easy chances at Stockport and still won 5-0. What does the xG say about that? Hint: I don’t really care, but that’s because I’m too old school. I’ll leave it to the ‘whizz kids’.
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Did we? I don’t recall that. My memory of that game was that, once we’d sealed the deal, we had few further clear scoring opportunities.
I’d say “….if the data tells you that Dodds is as creative….”
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In Phil’s Stockport home preview there are extended highlights starting at 17:40 which show how big the score could have been. Give yourself a treat and immerse yourself in the beauty of this performance.
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This
I reckon the players didn’t realise they were outperforming the xG, Gx, Gs, SClub, 4DX or whatever it is. Had a huddle and said “lads, we better step down our game cos the data nerds will think their data is borken (sic), this data stuff says we are 5th. King Kone - stop scoring mkay?”
The simple facts are if Dan Rice gets the recruitment right and Mike Dodds fashions his own successful team…happiness.
If not we’ll possibly have more idea about who bolloxed up this season.
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